Closing shelters creates uncertainty

New focus on permanent solutions means end to year-round operation Tuesday

Natalie Antoine, 56, says she is thankful to the people who brought donations to the residents of the homeless shelter through the winter months. Tuesday morning the city's two shelters will close, so Antoine and some 350 others are making preparations for housing.
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

Natalie Antoine, 56, says she is thankful to the people who brought donations to the residents of the homeless shelter through the winter months. Tuesday morning the city's two shelters will close, so Antoine and some 350 others are making preparations for housing.
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

San Diego  Carla Battle is worried she’ll have to sleep on the sidewalk somewhere.

Mark Sheetz is hoping to couch surf and then get a dirt-cheap apartment, possibly in Tijuana.

Sepanda Djalaly thinks he’s saved enough to afford one of the downtown residential hotels that cater to people on government assistance.

They are among more than 350 homeless people at risk of returning to the streets Tuesday morning when San Diego’s two homeless shelters close for the first time in nearly two years.

Bill Feucht, who admits to being a little vain, drew a comb through his hair using the screen of a laptop as a mirror before dinner at the downtown homeless shelter Monday night. It would be the last supper there until the facility reopens in November. — Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

Bill Feucht, who admits to being a little vain, drew a comb through his hair using the screen of a laptop as a mirror before dinner at the downtown homeless shelter Monday night. It would be the last supper there until the facility reopens in November.
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

Former Mayor Bob Filner declared the shelters year-round facilities in fall 2012 and said they’d remain open until they were no longer needed.

But Mayor Kevin Faulconer and other city leaders announced in April that the shelters would close June 30 and revert back to opening only from late November through March each year.

Yes
45% (439)

No
55% (527)

966 total votes.

The goal is redirecting nearly $2 million it cost to make the shelters year-round toward programs that aim to get people permanently off the streets — instead of just temporarily.

“It’s unfortunate people have to sleep out in the elements, but we’re pushing for more permanent solutions and we need to implement new strategies,” said Dolores Diaz, executive director of the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless. “These shelters were originally intended to be seasonal.”

While getting people permanently off the streets is a great goal, year-round shelters serve as central intake points for homeless people where they get put on a path back to self-reliance, said Bob McElroy, who runs the city’s 220-bed shelter near Petco Park for the Alpha Project.

“You need a place to start the process, and there won’t be one when the shelters are closed,” McElroy said. “They’ll be over 200 people sleeping outside who had been sleeping inside.”

McElroy said the shelters keep people safe, give them a chance to stop using drugs and, in some cases, keep them alive by allowing them to refrigerate the medicines they use.

“It’s a tremendous resource and we’re not going to have it for four months,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s a sky-is-falling moment,” she said. “We didn’t see a large increase of homeless people on the streets the last time they closed.”

Farrar said some homeless people have used the extra time in the shelters to save up for rooms in downtown residential hotels that they probably could have afforded anyway.

The city will solve the lack of a place to take homeless people needing emergency shelters in September when a new 25-bed triage facility opens with case management counseling aimed at finding permanent housing.

Farrar said the city’s shift toward permanent solutions and outcome-based programs is the right move, contending it will create incentives for people to become self-reliant and accountability for those receiving assistance.

While the shelters will be open less, Faulconer’s new approach will help boost assessment and case management services when they are open. In addition to the downtown shelter, there is a federally funded 150-bed shelter for veterans on Pacific Highway.